


Dead to the World

by Viridian5



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Drama, Gen, Weirdness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1998-04-15
Updated: 1998-04-15
Packaged: 2017-10-02 09:36:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Viridian5/pseuds/Viridian5
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Are</i> dreams the answers to questions you don't know to ask? Sometimes, you don't want them to be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dead to the World

**Author's Note:**

> No spoilers in particular, but the story takes place during the fifth season.
> 
> I've had one of the images in this story stuck in my head for over a year. Now that I've finally gotten it out, maybe I can lay it to rest.

_"Alive to the universe, dead to the world"_  
  -- "Nutopia" by Pigface  
\--------------------------------------------------------

"Mulder!" Scully shouted as she wandered through the dark labyrinthine halls searching for her partner. She constantly had this dream. Hell, this was her life.

She felt her throat close up as she saw the edge of his trench coat and a long leg sprawled near it. A new and different element. Now anything could happen.

She quickly knelt next to him and revealed him with her flashlight beam. He looked so pale and still lying there. He had something odd, something that had left bruises and abrasions, wrapped tightly around his neck. Two more lines of that something enveloped his wrists. When she felt his neck to search for a pulse her fingers brushed it and quickly shied away. It was warm, moist, and alive. The other end of each of the lines trailed off into the darkness.

But he still lived. She took a scalpel from her coat pocket and prepared to cut him loose.

Mulder's eyes slowly opened, as if consciousness didn't come easily. She watched so many emotions flicker through them before he settled on blankness.

"Scully, I'm so glad you're here." His voice sounded as abused and dazed as the rest of him looked, but he smiled. "I'm glad I have a chance to say good-bye."

"What are you talking about, Mulder?"

"They came back for me, Scully. They never meant to leave me behind."

"Who?" Her heart sank.

"The aliens. The ones who took Samantha."

Scully couldn't help taking on the tone adults reserve for slow children. "How do you know that it's aliens, let alone the ones who took your sister?"

He pointed into the darkness. A sudden green brilliance blinded her. As Scully's eyes cleared she saw Samantha as Samantha looked in Mulder's photos, a child Samantha, frozen at the time of her abduction. But not quite as she was in the photographs. She radiated the green light, and it traveled through her... tentacles down the floor and... into the things Scully had tried to cut off of Mulder.

Oh, God.

"That's not your sister," Scully said, "and she's not going to take you to an alien ship. That ship you're not going to won't take you to another planet and some happy ending with Samantha."

"I know that, Scully. I've always known that. I lied to you. I told you I was chasing the Truth, but that wasn't what I was chasing. Not really." The look on his face scared her. Distant, dreamy, sad. Insane. "I had reasons for ditching you all the time. You weren't supposed to be here for this. No one was."

"You promised, Fox!" the Samantha-thing whined.

"I know, Sam. I had a moment of weakness. Five years of it, actually. I got so lonely."

Scully couldn't bear to hear any more. She slashed down with the scalpel and felt unnatural flesh part beneath the sharp blade. Green blood welled.

Samantha screamed, and a tentacle came whipping for Scully's face. Mulder moved into its path at the last moment. He gasped as it hit his arm with a sharp crack and cut through his trench coat, suit jacket, dress shirt, and the flesh of his arm. The wound quickly started to bleed.

"You promised no one else would get hurt! Just me!" Mulder yelled. "You promised."

Samantha smirked. "Then it's time to go, Fox." Her tentacles pulled him to his feet.

"Scully, get on your life. Forget I ever dragged you into mine. That's the best thing you can do for yourself."

"Mulder--"

"Go and don't look back."

"Mulder--"

"No more time." Samantha smirked and jerked her tentacles with a sharp snap.

Time slowed for Scully. She saw it all. His sudden smile as he felt the shock wave coming. The look of peace on his face just before the thing pretending to be his sister snapped his neck with a loud cracking sound. The way his hair flew as his head fell back and then limply forward. The way his soul and mind drained from his eyes like water from a broken bottle.

The thing dropped his body to the floor like trash and started to laugh. Green fire devoured its flesh until only a large, elongated skull remained, still laughing. Then it too vanished, leaving Scully alone with Mulder's shattered corpse.

Scully awoke gasping and shaking. She stared at the clock. 3 a.m. She knew she wouldn't be going back to sleep.

Mulder had once told her that dreams were answers to questions you didn't know to ask.

//It means nothing. It was just a dream. You can't believe that your subconscious could correctly analyze Mulder when the rest of you can't figure him out, that he could--// Her mind refused to finish the thought.

She found herself reaching for the phone to call him, to reassure herself that he was still alive. Stupid. It was just a dream. Besides, even Mulder wouldn't be awake at 3 a.m.

She dialed his number without even thinking about it. "Mulder," he answered on the second ring. He sounded tired but not as if she had just interrupted his sleep. It disgusted her that some part of her hadn't believed that he hadn't died until she heard his voice. She noticed corny old monster movie music and screams in the background. His neighbors must love him.

"Mulder, it's me." //I had a dream in which you happily committed suicide.// "I can't sleep. Knowing you, I thought you might be awake. Did you sleep at all?"

"I took the nightmare express and got off at insomnia station."

She didn't need to ask about his dreams. She heard them sometimes at night when she tried to sleep in the next room and ignore the screams filtering through the thin walls. She had become accustomed to sleeping through them. The one time she had come in to wake him up he had looked so ashamed that she resolved to let him be, let him deal with the nightmares himself.

Scully felt the night closing in around her. So quiet and dark and vast. Only a few scattered souls awake in it, as distant from one another as stars. Gravity seemed to drag at her at three times its normal pull in her fatigue, but she couldn't sleep. How did Mulder stand it?

"Scully?"

She thought of the dream Mulder, so lost and alone, stripping the people around him away so he could die in peace without hurting anyone. She thought of herself, feeling lost and alone. "I know I won't be going back to sleep. Mulder, would you like to meet somewhere?"

"Scully?" He sounded stunned. And so pathetically hopeful.

"Well?"

"I sometimes go to a great 24-hour diner nearby. They specialize in comfort food, and the coffee's good."

"I'll drive over to your apartment to meet you." A sudden scream made her grip the phone harder. "What was that?"

"The giant ant just bit the head off of some poor guy."

Scully shuddered. "I'll see you soon." //And I'm not letting go without a fight.//

### End


End file.
